Winter in July
by stasia-dear
Summary: People in Boston are dying in a gruesome way - heads blown from the inside. Walter Bishop has seen this before, and Peter may be the key to stopping the carnage. If he survives with his head intact. Bolivia implied. Story Complete
1. Chapter 1

All characters not mine, all weird science I can't blame on anyone else.

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Winter in July

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Peter sat at the counter in the Harvard basement lab listlessly, through the already hot but rain sticky Boston morning. His head was slumped in his hands, elbows propped on the table. He hadn't been sleeping well, and for this, could not (directly) blame his father's nocturnal ramblings. He'd been having the same nightmare over and over, the past few nights. Laying on a table in a white white space, unable to move. Blue-white light with indistinct shapes in the periphery of his vision. And the cold. Brittle, numb, implacable, eternal, hopeless cold. Cold that ever so gradually seized up through his limbs, body, stole over his heart, and then seeped into brain where he knew, just knew, if it ever completely swallowed his mind that he would never wake up.

He wearily started to lift his head, rubbing his palms through his eyes and down his cheeks as he did so. Halfway up, he reluctantly opened his eyes, to find Walter staring keenly at him. But not his Walter – the man gazing at him was poised and focused, and was favoring him with the penetrating look of a scientist dispassionately watching a lab rat succumb to a manufactured virus.

Peter found himself frozen mutely in mid-gesture, heart racing, his eyes wide, the self-same rat pinned on his stool unable to look away. He felt a mixture of both immediate precariousness as well as an ugly sense of déjà vu. Time and sound stopped – until the lab door swung open with a crash of light and hallway chatter.

He turned his head to see Olivia walking through the doorway, raincoat over her arm, fiddling last raindrops off her umbrella distractedly. Unnerved, he turned back to the counter, only to find Walter slumped sloppily at the stove and looking at him with a familiar perplexed expression.

"Forgive me for asking again, son, but what end of this DOES a scrambled egg come out of?" On his fingertips, Walter had precariously balanced a raw egg, and was poking at it tentatively with a spatula.

Peter felt the blood drain back into his heart and blinked slowly. Olivia set her things down on a table and greeted the two men.

She did a double take at Peter. His skin was grey pale and his eyes were hunted.

"Peter," she said with small concern, taking his shoulder and turning to look at him closely, "are you feeling ok?"

For a moment the younger Bishop considered collapsing in her arms, but then stealing another look at his father - fruitlessly shaking the raw egg and then inexplicably holding it to his ear - he gently shrugged out of her grip and mustered an ironic grin.

"Oh, yeah. Besides having to Groundhog Day my way through freshman chemistry class with Mr Wizard here, for all eternity, I'm doing great. How bout you?"

Olivia straightened and pursed her lips. Peter slid off the stool, and without malice moved over to take the egg from his father.

"You want eggs, Walter? Fine, look, I'll cook you an egg. Go do something with less potential for setting the lab on fire."

He bumped his father out of the way, who clapped his hands gleefully and scurried over to Olivia, clasping both of her hands in his.

"Olivia, my dear. The rain makes you positively radiant. Come see how my flesh-eating ice borer worms are coming along. And Peter," he said over his shoulder, "do not add cranberries to my eggs. I simply can't tolerate them – it is not like it is Thanksgiving today."

Peter glanced back and frowned over the non-sequitur but continued bustling with the pans, spatulas, butter and other various egg paraphernalia. If nothing else, it was an excuse to do something other than focus on the pounding in his head. "So, Olivia – would you like cranberry or non-cranberry eggs, then?"

Over in the corner of the lab, Walter was excitedly summarizing for Olivia the results of his investigations.

"Yes, so here you see some of ice worms that we removed from the body at the docks. Mr Baker, was it? I never forgot a face, but then, his was gone with the rest of his head, wasn't it? Poor chap. Exploding brains, tut tut."

"I have these little fellows in this chill box to keep their temperature down below freezing. Interestingly, if you raise them even a little above freezing, their bodies actually dissolve due to the cellular membranes losing structural rigidity. It's as if they need the cold to help them stay solid."

He lifted the lid of the chill box, while nodding mournfully over at a large beaker sitting nearby, half filled with some murky bluish substance, which Olivia realized slightly nauseously must be the remains of some of the other worms.

"But Professor," she asked quizzically, "the body we found, our Mr Baker, wasn't anywhere near freezing. How is it that the ice worms managed to survive?" She swallowed. "At least some of them."

Over at the small lab stove, the eggs (without cranberries) were in a large skillet and starting to bubble. Peter leaned heavily against the side of the stove with one hand, and with the other, rubbed his forehead with the ball of the hand holding the spatula. He considered idly that he had just the same sort of headache you get when quickly drinking something icy, a frozen margarita or a root beer float. With some of his earlier irritation back, he mentally vowed not to indulge his father in any more late night treat runs unless it was to a honest-by-god pub.

When Peter drew back his hand, he noticed it was slightly shaking.

His father continued to lecture enthusiastically in the back. With long forceps, he carefully removed a worm from the chill box and presented it to Olivia. The worm was about 2 inches long, fat and segmented, and of the peculiarly glacial blue of ice itself. It wiggled determinedly against the metal tongs holding it.

Olivia shrank back imperceptibly despite herself.

"It looks far too healthy to have been sitting in a live – or even room temperature - body for any length of time," she repeated.

"Yes, don't they look good?"

Walter brought the worm close to his face and examined it.

"It helped to have something to feed them. Luckily, I had the foresight to bring a piece of the dead man's chest with me after removing them. They'd seemed to like that."

He set the worm down on a plastic tray with ice cubes already layering it, while Olivia considered becoming sick.

Behind them, Peter staggered for a second, gripping the edge of the stove for balance, as he got the building, overwhelming sensation of his head being inexorably ripped open from without, complete with cracking skull and bits of brain flying. He shook his head, only to have a whole aurora borealis rattle his skull. He opened his mouth to say something, but found his throat constricted and breath icy in his chest.

"So clearly," Walter continued, obliviously, "when they were introduced IN the dead man, the temperature would have had to be below freezing, long enough for them to get established."

Olivia frowned. "But, Walter - it is over 90 deg out there. This man didn't work with any kind of ice or air conditioning systems, and his family swears he hadn't left Boston for the last month, much less made a trip to the Arctic and back."

Walter smiled sadly, with some triumph.

"Maybe his physical body wasn't. But it wouldn't have to be. We're considering astral projection, here."

Olivia looked at him with mouth agape. Before she could muster an answer, there was a clatter, soft thump, and a hoarse moan. She spun around as Walter craned to look past her shoulder.

By the stove, Peter had slumped to his knees and was pressing both hands to his forehead in what looked very much like an attempt to hold his head together. Olivia rushed to his side, sliding to her knees as she reached out to him, pulling him to her chest. His skin was icy, and as his head lolled back and his eyes slid to her face, they were eerily blue. Glacial blue.

Forgotten for the moment, Walter pursed his lips and carefully placed the ice borer back in the chill box. He replaced the lid, and as as afterthought, rummaged under the counter and pulled out a thin metallic webbing. This he draped carefully over the box. Straightening his lab coat, he drifted in Olivia's wake, with a soft, worried expression on his face. Peter seemed to be mostly or at least materially unconscious, and Olivia struggled slightly to edge him up off the floor the few yards to the couch. He lay back unprotestingly, and after a moment, she drew a blanket up to his chin.

"Peter", she said earnestly, stroking his cold cheek with a knuckle, "Can you hear me?"

His eyes fluttered, green again, and his head rolled tiredly against her hand.

"Walter, what is wrong with him?"

The older Bishop, who'd been looming over her, eyeing his son, drew back.

"I'm not… sure," he said, tentatively.

Olivia looked around at him sharply.

"What do you mean, you're not "sure"? Do you know what is happening to him?"

Walter looked around evasively.

"I think he's been having nightmares. He wouldn't tell me, of course."

"Walter…", she said warningly. "This isn't a nightmare. How long has this been going on?"

The scientist stepped back and sat gingerly at the end of the couch by his son's feet.

"Oh, I don't know precisely, of course." He sounded apologetic, almost. "I assume from when I first brought the ice borers home to put in our hotel minibar at night. Before I got the chill box delivered."

Olivia stared at him, aghast.

"You did WHAT?"

Walter looked down, petulantly.

"Well, I couldn't let them DIE, and the fridge here was full. And too warm. The fridge in the hotel was just perfect because all there was in it was those tiny little bottles of alcoholic beverages and as you know, they have a freezing point much lower than water. Or ice worms."

Olivia's eyes were opened wide. She looked at the penitent, cowering figure in front of her, then looked up at the ceiling, and then looked again down with a long breath.

"Walter." She said, and the professor reluctantly looked up to meet her eyes.

"What have you done to Peter?"

The object of their attention was coming groggily around. A faint pink blush had come back to his cheeks, and his eyes fixed on Olivia with effort.

"Olivia?" he said weakly.

The blonde agent looked down at him and cradled his head protectively.

"I'm here, Peter. You're OK."

"Mmm, ok..." His lashes fluttered on his cheeks, and then his eyes snapped open wide. "Then why is my father this close to me with electrodes in his hands?? That is NOT ok!"

Peter glared frantically at his father and feebly edged himself up the couch closer into Olivia's embrace

"Son, don't be alarmed. I just need to measure your core body temperatures." With that, the scientist eagerly reached in with the fans of wires.

Olivia reached out to knock away the older man's hands with her own extended arm.

"You are NOT putting those in my body," Peter protested.

"Oh, no, no my boy, I just want to measure the skin temperature at various points as surrogate. You'd be much too warm inside already by the time I was able to implant anything surgically."

Peter's eyes grew wide again and he shrank back into Olivia's chest as Olivia spoke first.

"DR BISHOP. Stop. What ARE you doing?" she demanded.

Walter sighed and sat back. The older man's gaze went long, reaching back and reliving old memories.

"The worms," he started slowly, "to move through ice like they do, so soft as they are, no teeth... William and I suspected that they might have some natural affinity, natural resonance, you might say, for interdimensional travel."

Despite the effort, Peter rolled his eyes and coughed hoarsely.

"And here's where we're going off the rails on this crazy, crazy train, now.."

His father looked at him fondly.

"No. No, we were on to something. Truly. It was our intention to demonstrate real astral projection, where the traveler, rather than being simply a disincarnate presence, would actually have physical reality in the distant place." More memories flowed. "The ice borers were the key. We hypothesized that they could act as catalyst for a human traveler, one that was sensitive to their magnetic frequencies. Magnetic fields are like roadways to them, you know…" he carried on conversationally.

"That is why we focused our early experiments on the magnetic north pole, where both ice borers and natural magnetic fields are concentrated."

Peter had experienced dawning horror as his father continued to speak.

"Canada!" he exclaimed. "We went to Canada a few winters when I was a kid!"

His father beamed.

"Yes, very good, Peter! You always wanted to see the reindeer. I would tell you that we were visiting Santa Claus. Or was it that you wanted see an elf, and I promised we'd visit Disneyland?" He frowned, considering.

Olivia looked from one man to another in disbelief.

"So, Walter – you used your son to attempt astral travel, at, at, the magnetic north pole? Using flesh-eating worms?"

There was an open, pregnant, pause.

"It was long ago. We weren't successful." Walter stood up briskly, as Peter again closed his eyes in long suffering resignation.

"But it looks like someone else has been working on it since then," he continued. "I didn't mean to cause you discomfort, son, but I needed to see if these worms were the same kind we experimented with. And I did need a fridge to keep them in, since you refused to get me the ice cream machine last month," he finished defensively.

Peter narrowed his eyes in disgust, but didn't say anything. Olivia shook her head and tried to make clear sense of their path.

"Ok, so someone who knew about your experiments with ice borers and, um, astral travel is now trying to reproduce them, with the effect of sending at least one man to his death in the arctic. And, bringing him back."

She frowned.

"So, the question is, what is our man Baker's connection to these people? Was he involved in the team, or unwilling participant? And in that case, what made him a target?"

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Reviews, please! While I get the hang of this. I've still got a few episodes to catch up on, but couldn't resist opportunity to write weird science.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter two - I know where I'm going, it is just a matter of getting there! Blast it being Monday again tomorrow.

Thank you all SO much for the encouraging reviews - I see what everyone means about feedback being a (hack) writer's best friend.

All characters not mine, all weird science I can't blame on anyone else.

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Winter in July: Chapter 2

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The trio sat in silence for a long few minutes, both Olivia and the scientist gazing thoughtfully at Peter, who was recovering enough to become uncomfortable being center of attention.

"Well, then," he croaked, "perhaps we can start with, why me? Why am I sitting here just a boarding pass shy of having my brain exit my head on the last train for Canada, while you two are able to leisurely chat up my imminent demise?"

Walter looked at him reproachfully. "Well, technically, you're not sitting, you're practically laying across Agent Dunham's lap, and really, as if your own father would have anything but your best health in mind." He smiled in what he likely imagined was an ingratiating manner.

Olivia flushed a bit but kept her arm protectively around Peter's body, while Peter snarled, "Oh, that would be the vast portions of my childhood I don't remember, then. With my other, ethical Dr Salk-curing-polio scientist father." But he made no move to get away from the blonde agent – impossible, since any avenue off the couch might bring him closer within reach of the electrodes, or worms, or worse.

Olivia licked her lips and tried to focus on the facts.

"Ok, so first things first. Why DO these things have an affect on Peter?" After a beat, she continued, "And how do we protect him? Like now?"

Peter looked up into Olivia's chin over the top of his head, quelching something like pure adoration. _Guardian angels in navy pantsuits…_

Past the awkward "confessions" part of the discussion, Walter regained animation and started pacing the floor thoughtfully.

"Well, since Peter has been exposed to the worms before…, " he started. Olivia squelched a nascent outbust from the man in her arms as the professor continued, "he's sensitive to being in their presence."

"At least, as long as they are unshielded in any way." He walked over to the chill box and fingered the metal meshing over it. "This material is room temperature superconductor – well, almost, but that's another story – in any case, it appears to be acting as a neutralizing force on the worms' channeling of magnetic field, by allowing induced currents to form in the mesh and damping energy used for travel. Err, travel being the optimistic outcome."

"So as long as the worms are in the box..?" Olivia asked.

"Yes, precisely. Brain and head remain as one. Though it is an incomplete barrier – you really can't shield for a magnetic field entirely. But practically, unless the worms are actually introduced INTO the body, thereby aligning with the body's own magnetic field, the traveler cannot leave this plane."

"So really, son," he said brightly, "you were never in any real danger."

Peter growled in his throat as he gingerly swung his feet down to the floor and into a sitting position. Olivia also sat back, but hovered close. She quickly jumped in with her summary of the situation before it deteriorated even more rapidly.

"Alright then. Two things. One – what makes these worms special, and can we tell anything about where they came from? And two – what made Brian Baker special, that he ended up part of this experiment?"

Walter clasped his hands triumphantly and beamed. "Why yes, of course my dear – you are so right! The worms' natural abilities have to be augmented to produce fields of this magnitude, which we did back in the day by introducing artificially radioactive metalloids into their system. I will examine the beasts, and see what activation elements are being used and see if I can determine a signature that might lead to a source."

"Sounds… great," Olivia offered. "Ok, then I will do the legwork on Baker to see if I can find a connection."

"Peter, though…" The object of her study turned his eyes dolefully to her.

"I don't think Peter should stay here, if you're going to have the worms out for examination. When does Astrid arrive?" she asked.

Walter looked downcast for a moment, but then smiled resignedly. "Ah, your lovely Egyptian assistant. I believe she said she would arrive around 11am. Today, I think. Yes, she could help me quite nicely. And I suppose," he trailed off, "it would do Peter good to be out of the near field range of the worms for a little while."

Peter almost bounced off the couch in anticipation, staggering sideways a bit before recovering a bit of savoir faire. "Great! I would really, really love a chance put a little distance between my brain and any lurking magnetic interdimensional worms, if anyone could arrange that." Without looking at his father, he walked carefully over to the coat stand by the door and grabbed a jacket hanging there, and waited expectantly. Olivia also stood up and gathered her things.

"Walter," she admonished, "do NOT start anything before Astrid gets here, make sure to let her help you."

The older Bishop looked longingly over at the stove. "But I never got my eggs," he said plaintively.

Peter snorted and moved toward the door. "I'll call Astrid and have her bring you takeout. Egg McMuffins, right? Extra cranberries?" Without waiting for an answer, he awkwardly shouldered on his jacket and disappeared out into the hall.

Following in his wake, Olivia nodded to the professor and hurried to catch up with her ward.

The scientist sat down on the couch with exaggerated dignity, pulling out a pad of paper and pencil with a flourish. "Perhaps now I can get some work done, finally, anyway."

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In the car, Peter gratefully pressed his cheek against the cool leather of the passenger seat while Olivia pulled the big SUV out of the parking lot and into Boston traffic. They drove in silence for a while.

"Ok, so, where do we start? Questioning the widow? Running his file for priors or prior service? Googling?" His voice was muffled in the car seat.

Olivia looked at him sharply, as she continued driving.

"You," she said firmly, watching traffic, "you, my friend are going straight to bed. Wormlessly."

With effort, he rolled one eye over to regard her profile.

"But you need me. Believe me, I've got no joy in having a familial radioactive metalloid relationship to flesh-eating anythings, especially Canadian ones, but if there is anyone that might be able to discern a pattern from that, it would be me."

The car rolled to a stop, coincidentally, and Peter squinted up to a semi-familiar brownstone.

"This isn't the hotel?" he offered, redundantly.

Olivia chewed her lip. "No," she answered, "it's my apartment. But you're right, I could use you."

Surprised, he struggled to sit upright. "Now, I hope I didn't give you the wrong idea earlier. I'm not really that sort of girl."

Despite herself, she grinned. "Peter Bishop, in your condition you're not fit to wrestle a 5 year old." Before he could retort, she held up a hand warningly and got out of the car, coming around to his side to help him out.

As he stood up shakily on the curb, she took his shoulder to steady him and then looked at him seriously. "You can't be near that lab, right now, Peter. I don't think your father would kill you on purpose, but…" He grimaced, but didn't disagree.

"So same goes for the hotel. God knows what else he has salted away in there."

Peter blanched for a moment, "I told you I needed my own room…"

She led up the stairs to the door. "I know, I know. But even more than that, Peter," she said, unlocking the door, and taking another moment to look him in the eye, "if someone else knows about these experiments like your dad does, then they might know other things that he knows."

"Like about you."

Closing the door behind them, she guided the man over to her library space, where in the comfortable room there was a long leather couch and a laptop computer.

"Really," he protested, "I'm feeling much, much better."

"I want to help." He looked at her pleadingly.

Olivia smiled. "That's what the laptop is for. Get busy, Bishop. I expect a full report on Baker, astral travel, Santa Claus and whatever else you can dig up, when I get back."

She picked up her keys and made to go back for the door. "Call me if you find out anything, and maybe check on your dad, uh, Walter, when you get a chance. I do feel a little nervous about leaving Astrid there alone with him."

Peter smiled dourly. "Oh, he's mostly harmless. Except to family." He switched on the computer, logged on as guest, and was already deeply engrossed as Olivia regarded him with uncharacteristic fondness and closed the door behind her.

Stopping on the stoop, she did pause. _What kind of father…?_

Shrugging it off, she got into her car, and went for her first stop – Baker's widow. Her least favorite type of call.

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_CSI: Boston_ coming up. Thank y'all again for all your comments!


	3. Chapter 3

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Sorry so long between updates. This chapter is a little background set up, but back to action soon, I hope. Thank everyone for your great comments!

Nothing in Fringe NOR McDonalds is mine (and more's the pity).

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As Astrid opened the door to the basement lab, she did, as she did most days, pause to strike what she thought of her "Up and Coming Young Agent" pose – straight back, eager face, stiff upper lip. And then quickly reviewed her top 3 candidates for the what-professor-bishop-would-mistake-my-name-for-today game. Today, she decided, hand on the door knob, it would be… Asgard, Astarte, Azure. She had never guessed right.

With a not entirely forced smile, she entered the lab.

"Professor Bishop? Hello? I'm here." She placed a large paper sack on the coffee table, looking around the apparently empty lab. "Who wanted the six Egg McMuffins, anyway?"

From behind Jean's back, Walter's head popped up like a demented jack-in-the-box. "Assyrian!"

Astrid's smile didn't falter, but she did chalk that one up to her list.

"Ah, bringer of sustenance. Did I ever tell you how I used genetic manipulation of Rhode Island Red hens to produce eggs that were pre-cooked?" He threw himself on the bag of snacks and drew out a single wax-paper bundle with reverence.

Astrid knew enough to allow the scientist's enthusiasm to play out before attempting to start any work – and in any case, as usual, she'd made sure to check in with Olivia to find out what the goal line was to be for the day so she could shepherd her charge. Normally she also checked in with Peter, but Olivia had been quite clear that Astrid should not induce or allow Peter to show up at the laboratory today.

_Just you and me today, Professor. Will I know what doom looks like when I see it? Cause Olivia will kill me if I let anything bad happen here._

She busied herself with the housekeeping errands of the lab: putting away stray equipment, compiling random notes into single binder, checking Jean's feed and cleaning up (?) a very burnt pan of scrambled eggs. All the while, Walter rhapsodied about previous egg-based meals he'd had, but then gradually phased in more musings about ice worms and magnetism, which she took as her cue to gently facilitate work to begin.

"So Professor, what do we need to do to determine what augmentations your ice worms have had?" She'd found that it was often helpful to give Bishop a concrete base to start from. "What equipment would you like me to stage for you?"

The scientist immediately took on a thoughtful air, still munching a third or fourth mcmuffin consideringly.

"Mmmm. I believe I would like to start by dissecting one worm, and then using the mass spectrometer on each part of the worm in turn to determine the material characteristics. Now, the problem with this is that we don't have a control worm to also experiment on, to contrast what normal distributions would be… Where is my book on worm biochemistry, did you lend it out again?"

With one ear open, Astrid busied herself setting up the isolation box for Walter to perform the worm autopsies, arranging the requested equipment on the table nearby, and starting the autocalibrations. If she lived long enough through this to retire, she had a great career as a high school science teacher to look forward to.

Hours later, she found herself daydreaming of sitting in an overheated classroom in Bismark, South Dakota lecturing on sheep eye anatomy when Walter's voice broke into her ruminations.

"Astarte! I think I've found our answer!" he called.

Mentally, she chalked a "place" in her win column for nickname of the day. She hurriedly picked up her laptop– amongst her duties was to be scribe, lest Walter's suspect short term memory falter.

"As I suspected, this worm appears to have been doped with a radioactive material. Very clever though…" he trailed off, looking at a display on the brand new genetic sequencer that she helped him set up (with substantial internet browsing).

"It seems that rather than to simply introduce a foreign material into the worm's system, they've actually taken the genetic material of the worm and substituted radioactive variants of the specific genes which code for the magnetic susceptibility in the first place. In essence, taking the worm's natural abilities, and amplifying them directly." He had an admiring look on his face as he studied the readout. "Much more elegant than our earlier, crude approach – the worm's system won't reject the material, and it is placed to work with maximum harmony with the already existing structure."

He shook his head admiringly.

Astrid asked eagerly, "So does this give you clues as to who is doing this?"

Walter frowned and shook his head. "Oh no, I have no idea." Astrid looked bemused. "But I can possibly reproduce it!"

She looked at the professor warily. "Why would that be useful?"

"Well my dear," he replied, "if we're going to catch the bad guys, then we have to find them, correct? So we need our own worms, coded for the return journey."

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Olivia re-read the address in her hands as she pulled up to a tidy bungalow on the outskirts of Everett.

The woman who answered the door was as tidy and nondescript as the house itself – petite, short brown hair, youngish – younger than Brian Baker had been. "Yes?" Her voice was toneless, she dabbed surreptitiously with a tissue at her eyes.

Olivia hesitated a moment. "Mrs Baker? I'm Agent Dunham from Homeland Security." She flashed her badge.

"I'm very sorry for your loss."

The woman looked taken aback. "Uh, thank you, um, Agent – who are you?" She peered at the blonde visitor quizzically.

"Agent Dunham from Homeland Security. I'm sorry for the timing, but I'm here to ask you a few questions about your husband. May I come in?"

After a pause, the door swung open wide.

"I don't know how I can help you. The police were already here, there was nothing I could tell them about Brian. He was just – we're just ordinary people." She led the agent into a small stuffy living room, gestured to a chair, and then sat down across the coffee table from her.

"So, your husband was an electrician, Mrs Baker?" Olivia asked.

"Oh, Anita. Um, yes. He worked for a small electrical contractor outlet, Curt's Electrical. They do mostly industrial projects, maintenance, things like that. Most days he'd be doing routine work, usually out at those big industrial plants out off Route 128."

Olivia's eyebrows rose. "Would you happen to know what companies he did work for?"

Anita Baker looked sideways, and then back. "No, I never really paid much attention. I should have…" She covered a sniffle and regarded the floor sightlessly.

Olivia reached over and touched the woman's hand. "I appreciate your time, every little bit of information might help." The younger woman smiled wanly.

"So, did Mr Baker have any new acquaintances, or anyone he was quarreling with, as far as you know? Was he acting differently lately, in any way?"

The brunette shook her head decisively. "Oh, no. Brian has had the same group of friends since high school. A nice bunch of guys, all live in the neighborhood. Most have been by here already to… you know, pay respects and all."

"Were any of them.. acting strangely at all?" Olivia went to put her pad and pencil away; it'd be up to the forensics guys to sift the house to find anything interesting.

"Strange?" Anita Baker echoed. "Just sad, you know. Especially Martin. He was really broken up, offering me heaven and earth… I finally had to shoo him out the door. I mean, nicely, of course. It was just a little too much."

Ears perked slightly, Olivia asked, "Martin..? A best friend?"

The younger woman made to get up tiredly. "Martin Abrams. A pretty good friend, I guess. He got Brian, well, Brian's firm, the electrical maintenance contract at his firm just recently."

Taking the hint, Olivia also rose, but fixed the woman with an intense look. "Would you know where Mr Abrams worked?"

"Some technology startup place. On 128. I think they do defense stuff, or something. Martin was always vague about it."

With her hand on the doorknob, Anita cocked her head with mild alarm. "You don't think Martin had anything to do with what happened to Brian, do you?"

Olivia kept her face composed as she took her leave. "I'm sure we'll figure it out, ma'am, I promise. Just let me know if anyone contacts you about your husband, would you?" She handed over a business card, gave the widow's hand a final reassuring pat, and slid her sunglasses down as she exited the bungalow into the sunlight.

As she hit the bottom of the walk, and heard the door to the house close behind her, she had her cell phone out and speed dialing within seconds.

"Olivia! I was just about to call." Charlie's voice was tinny on the phone. "We've got another body."

"Don't tell me," Olivia slumped into the driver's seat of her car.

"If you mean, don't tell me, it's another very messy headless corpse, then ok." The irony in her partner's voice was his way of taking the sting out of news.

"Alright, send me the address, and I'll check it out. Forensics team already there?"

"Yes, with orders not to touch anything until you get there." Charlie paused. "What were you calling for, anyway?"

Keys in the ignition, Olivia started the car and noted the incident address already appearing in her in-vehicle information system. "Oh, thanks, Charlie. Check up on a 'Martin Abrams' for me. Friend of the previous victim. Supposedly works at some firm out on the tech corridor."

There was a pause on the other side of the line. "Least I can do. You bringing your boys out?"

"Oh. Uh, no. Got them working in the lab, better to let Professor Bishop maintain some momentum."

Olivia felt a little uncomfortable not confiding in Charlie, but found herself leery of exposing Peter's connection to the case just yet. "Hold down the fort, huh, Charlie? And let me know what you dig up on Abrams."

"Talk soon, Dunham." The phone went silent. Olivia merged into traffic and into the afternoon.

*

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*

Will spend time off over the holidays to good use on this story; all e-cards and e-letters in review are welcome!


	4. Chapter 4

Sorry so late in updating, hope y'all enjoy!

insert standard disclaimers here, including for slow updaters

* * *

i

Peter awoke with a start, the sunlight starting to slant low through the tall window glass, making it nearing 6 pm or so. The laptop and bits of stickie notes were still balanced across his stomach, where he'd stretched out in a small but obviously comfortable recliner, and, apparently, at some point checked out. Perhaps after the clipped, icy conversation with his father earlier in the afternoon, which had reignited his headache - at least, in a psychosomatic way. There'd been a couple Sam Adams in Dunham's fridge, which he'd purloined purely for medicinal reasons, and now the day was gone.

He eased to a sitting position guiltily, and set the laptop and stickies off his belly back on the nearby desk. Squinting the sleep out of his eyes and yawning, he idly pawed through the stickies to reconstruct his thoughts. His father – Walter, he corrected himself firmly – had described the radioactive genetic manipulations he'd discovered, and how he needed unadulterated worms to test some things out. Somehow, through what was supposed to have been an acidly biting witticism on Peter's part, this had led to Astrid being dispatched to the New England Aquarium downtown, to their extensive penguin exhibit. Peter wryly imagined Astrid flashing her badge at the college student docents and demanding to interrogate the puffins.

He stood up, stretching his back, and considered calling Olivia again. She'd checked in with him earlier, prior to his conversation with Walter (and the beers), only to mention the possible tie with a technology firm employee and the fact of another dead body. He stood by the window, idly eyeing the street, and tunelessly humming the jingle from the latest advertising campaign of Massive Dynamic. With the random fact collection power of the internet, he'd found Martin Abrams and Massive Dynamic at much less than six degrees of separation to each other, one being employee of an oddly publicity-shy startup called GenoWave and one being a silent investor through what looked like a shell corporation.

GenoWave. In the faddish lingo of military industrial companies everywhere, the information provided on GenoWave's hypothetical products or services was of the "Offering Technological Solutions To Real-World In-Situ Issues For The Modern Warfighter" type, i.e., both devoid of content but conversely able to be interpreted as just about anything. The most interesting reading came from press releases and their own website which mentioned the main technical staff. A couple high-energy physicists oddly mixed with biochemists and a neurobiologist. And then the founder, Dr Richard Maven, author of several papers on ice ecosystems, and late of the University of Calgary. About the right age to have known his father while still the young, impressionable graduate student Rick or Richie Maven. No pictures were available on line – would Peter recognize him from his nightmares, anyway?

Peter shuddered, and sat down heavily on a settee by the window. He checked his phone for messages or missed calls, but there were none. Olivia must be still engrossed in the the crime scene she'd been on her way to when she'd called earlier. He sighed. Leaving a message was too difficult; he still didn't have the entire puzzle put together in his head for a 40 second update after the beep. He'd have liked to talk it through with her live, let things crystallize. With a scowl, he also admitted it would be easier to talk things out with both she and Walter together, for the mother of all yin and yang points of view.

The four walls and deepening shadows of the apartment seemed to close in on him suddenly, and he felt an overwhelming need to be on the move. Not through any desire for company, of course. He gathered up his stickies, shut down the computer, and went into the bathroom to wash up. Splashing water on his face, he looked at his dripping reflection in the mirror with the dawning realization that he had spent the better part of a day with the perfect, unfettered, if unethical, opportunity to innocently sift through Olivia's things. The woman who had lied and blackmailed him into coming back to Boston, out of reach of his Iraqi score and within reach of some fairly nasty former acquaintances. The real Peter Bishop would have leapt at the chance to get a drop on this woman, find an angle and get the upper hand. The real Peter Bishop – the life he was going to get back to as quickly as possible. Right?

With more force than necessary, he yanked a hand towel off a rack and rubbed his face dry. He strode forcefully through the living room, collected his things, and was out on the front stoop of the apartment with the door slammed shut before stopping to consider where he'd go. His jet-setting world had narrowed completely – now it was the hotel, the lab (no, no, no), the no-doubt still Olivia-less Federal Building or… here.

At the still Olivia-less but intoxicatingly Olivia-infused brownstone apartment.

The hotel it was then. He walked briskly down the street to where he was pretty sure there was a T station, knowing that the train stopped just a couple blocks from the hotel.

* * *

ii

In the bustle of dark figures in plastic windbreakers carrying on various forensics tasks, Olivia's still form and blonde hair stood out. She gazed down at the now-sheeted body at her feet, watching the blood from what would have been the head area slowly pool near the toe of her shoe.

"Ma'am?" A grizzled Boston PD captain tapped her on the shoulder, flipping open a notepad.

Olivia gathered her thoughts and turned to him, composing her face into an expectant expression. Her eyes flickered to the badge hung around the man's neck.

"Yes, Captain? What have you found?"

The detective began to rattle off items from his notes.

"This will all be in my report, with more of a narrative, but I thought you'd want to know at least the basics now. Victim's name is Mark McMannis. Boston native, but lived up in Nashua. Has a couple of grown kids, and an ex-wife. Ex-wife said she hadn't talked to him, but seemed like they were cordial enough. Cause of death…" The detective paused.

Internally, Olivia smiled ironically. Not even a veteran like him would see this type of thing very often.

"I think I can guess the cause of death," she said. "Did the coroner come up with anything interesting yet, though?"

The BPD officer made a look of disgust.

"Only that there were some wicked big maggots in the corpse already, considering he's only been dead probably 12 hours."

Wicked big blue ice-cold not-maggots, Olivia thought.

"Anything more about McMannis, where he worked or what he might have been involved with?"

The detective dutifully checked his notes again. Olivia idly considered that the temporary "Homeland Security" label she was stuck with wouldn't play well in a lot of situations, but that one could still depend on the older, salt of the earth, god-family-country law enforcement types to respect the mission. The ostensible mission.

"Says he was a plumber. Worked for some contract company, Boston Rooter? Did maintenance work, emergency calls, that sort of thing."

Olivia's jaw slammed shut.

"Thank you, detective. Let me know if you come up with anything else." Nodding at him, she pivoted on one foot and pulled out her cell phone and started to dial as she walked over to a quiet corner.

The officer looked faintly surprised at being cut off in mid report, but chalked it up to High Level Things. He put the notebook back into his pocket and merged back into the windbreaker crowd.

"Charlie," she barked, as soon as the phone was picked up, "see if Boston Rooter has a contract with any of the same companies that Curt's Electrical does."

Charlie's wry amusement came through the line.

"And hello to you, too, Agent Dunham. You mean, companies like GenoWave? Your boy toy called with a similar request."

Olivia felt a flush to her cheeks.

"Peter? He called you?" she echoed redundantly.

"Yes," he answered, "but don't worry, I told him you'd never date a colleague."

"Charlie!" Olivia started.

On the other side of the phone, Charlie rolled his feel off his desk and grew serious.

"Kidding, Dunham. Bad joke. So, yeah, Bishop called and asked me to check on GenoWave, get a list of all their service vendors. Boston Rooter, coincidentally, is on the list."

Olivia gnawed her lower lip for a moment.

"Charlie, we need to get a search warrant for GenoWave. Could you work that? We need to get corroboration from McMannis' and Baker's companies that each of the dead men had a service call at GenoWave in the last week or so, for justification."

There was a pause. "Ok. Take a couple hours, probably. We could always play your new Homeland buddies' national security investigation card and go in without one, if you were sure."

"Um," Olivia hesitated. "Just see what you can do the regular way first, ok? I need to go pick up the Bishops from the lab, anyway, so I wouldn't go right away."

"The lab?" Charlie repeated. "I think at least the not-yet-crazy Bishop is on his way to their hotel, don't know if the father is with him."

Frowning to herself, Olivia nonetheless brushed off the comment to Charlie.

"Oh, right. Well, I will round them up and get status, and then check in with you a little later. We can shoot for GenoWave during office hours first thing tomorrow, try the ask-nicely approach before pulling out the paperwork and starting alarms."

As Charlie signed off, Olivia was at her vehicle and redialing for Peter Bishop's phone. The response was an immediate "out of service" message, meaning his phone was either off or out of range of a cell tower. She left a message to call her back, and started up the SUV to head back into town towards the Bishops' hotel. It was a lot to ask of the man to just stay put, obviously.

* * *

iii

The not-yet-crazy Bishop who couldn't stay put emerged from the underground Copley T stop and turned the corner to his hotel. In a matter of minutes, he was up in the room he shared with his father and had turned on the Celtics game. He got some aspirin from his shaving kit in the bathroom, and sat down in front of the TV stand. Pulling a water out of the minibar, he blanched momentarily at the ice-borer-canister-sized gap on the top shelf and belatedly stood up to survey the room. Popping the top on the water resignedly, he started to make a sweep through the suite for any other residual experiments his father might have stashed.

Coming to his suitcase, he noticed that the top lid had been carefully replaced – more carefully than he remembered doing it that morning, what with a splitting headache and his father reciting "Gunga Din" at the top of his lungs from the shower. Tilting his head, he used a coat hanger to gingerly lift the top of the suitcase. There weren't any foreign objects in there, Peter was relieved to see, but his eyes narrowed as he confirmed that the clothes within were in a subtly different disarray then what he remembered in sharpening focus from earlier that day. He grimly finished a quick round of the room and then turning the living room light and TV out, he edged sideways to the window and peered through the side of the curtain down to the street.

Prius – no. Some sort of Japanese sedan, probably not. Black Crown Victoria… definite possibilities, though a total cliché. There were several SUVs parked on the road, as well, more ubiquitous than minivans any more, making it more convenient for your military industrial complex surveillance needs.

He considered his options. Nothing obvious had been taken, so whomever had tossed the room was doing reconnaissance, not theft. And they'd been very careful and deliberate, so not amateurs, either. Sitting back on the couch with only the small reading lamp on, he pursed his lips and took a swig of the water. Question was, did they get what they wanted? Or would they be back?

His question was answered that moment when the door was slammed in and two men rushed into the room. Reacting by instinct, Peter immediately doused the lamp next to him. With no lights, he had a slight advantage over the two men by virtue of his relative familiarity of the suite's layout.

His advantage would be measured in seconds, he knew. Peter launched himself at the spot where he expected the larger of the two men to be, driving a shoulder into the intruder's gut and slamming them both into the wall. Rolling away, he crouched behind a chair while seeing the second dark shape belatedly move over to intercept him. His hand lit upon the post of a floor lamp next to him, and he grabbed it with both hands and swung it like a Louisville Slugger to crack resoundingly into the second intruder's head.

Something heavy hit him in the shins – the man on the floor had scissored his legs around Peter's and knocked them out from under him. Peter fell full length to the floor, knocking the wind out of him, while he felt rather than saw the man jump to his feet and move in to finish him off. Returning the favor, he cocked back a foot and slammed it up at about knee height toward the enforcer guy at his side, and was satisfied to hear a sharp crack and a grunt of pain.

Peter jumped to a crouch with his back toward the door, and started to quickly crab walk back through it with his eyes straining into the dark of the room to catch a glimpse of the two intruders.

Which is why he didn't see the third man, who caught him solidly in the kidneys with a vicious kick. He rolled to his side on the floor, gasping.

The third man straightened, closed the door, and switched on the overhead lights. Squinting painfully, Peter looked up to see a broad-shouldered man with close-cropped black hair and grim expression. Behind him, he could hear the other two getting to their feet as well.

"What are you doing here? What do you want?" Peter snarled. Best offense..

The man in the doorway didn't deign to answer. One of the other thugs delivered a few well-placed kicks to the ribs, and as Peter tried painfully to curl his body out of the way, the dark-haired man caught a fistful of his shirt, plucked him off the floor and sprawled him out flat on the couch.

"Peter Bishop," the man said casually. "I expected tougher. Or more broken, I'm not sure."

One of his partners, bleeding from his temple, cast an evil eye on the captive Bishop while producing a syringe from an inner pocket. Almost simultaneously, the dark-haired man had dropped to one knee, wrapped an elbow around Peter's throat and had his head pinned against the sofa's armrest. Peter immediately threw his hands to the man's arm and tried to pry it away, only to have the lack of oxygen send black stars in his vision.

"Give it to him."

Peter felt a sharp prick on his bicep and found his head loose again. Despairing, he threw off the man's restraining hand and sat upright on the couch.

"Listen," he said. "I can get what you want. Let me know what your organization's stake is, and I'll make it good. I've got the money."

"You don't need to do this. We can negotiate."

The dark-haired man looked at him with amusement.

"What we want," he answered, "is Walter Bishop's prize guinea pig. The one that already has all the hooks in place for no doubt half a dozen different really interesting medical experiments. And all we want is to feed you to the worms, prematurely."

Peter's gut went cold with realization, even as he felt the cloying fizz of the drug start to permeate his muscles. He dizzily remembered Olivia's warning from earlier.

"The FBI knows about GenoWave."

He tried to focus on the dark-haired man, ignoring the others. "That's right. And in any case, this stuff didn't work before, and it's not working now, unless you're selling permanent headache cures to people unclear on the concept. You need to stop getting your science from bad Hindu comic books and…"

The back-hand across the mouth sent Peter hard back into the cushions and the fizziness abruptly engulfed his head, too. He thought he must be imagining things when the door slammed open for the second time that night and he heard, "Freeze! FBI!"

There was an interminable period of gunshots, glass breaking, and footsteps pounding down the fire escape past the window. Peter shook his head blearily and slumped off the couch.

"'Livia?" he called weakly, hoping.

Olivia bent over him and propped up his shoulder with a strong hand.

"Peter! Are you hurt?"

He shook his head disjointedly in mock humor. "Not sure. The drugs are probably covering it up." His head bounced back against the edge of the sofa.

Olivia's eyebrows went up and she patted him down for injuries. But for a little blood on his face and some tender spots, he didn't seem to be badly hurt.

"Peter." she said with concern, holding both his shoulders and trying to look into his eyes, "Have you been drugged?"

There was a labored pause. "Um. Yeah. Needed calvary about 5 minutes earlier. Next time….wait, you're not hurt?" He focused on her face with exaggerated care.

Olivia pulled his head against her shoulder and patted his back.

"Shh. I'm ok. We have to get you out of here though, alright?"

She took Peter's face in her hands and looked into the slits of his eyes. "You have to help me get you to the car, and get you somewhere to sleep this off."

He shook his head out of her hands and laid it back against the sofa.

"Tol' you I needed my own room."

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Thank you all for the helpful and encouraging reviews. Please forgive any nits here or there with names and such, I have no beta but would love a volunteer!


	5. Chapter 5

Thanks again to all who have faithfully kept with story, especially jt4life, wjobsessed and shadowwolfdagger.

And only for neoxer, I did have Olivia get one of the bad guys, by your suggestion - made for better story, as it happens! :)

as always - Nothing mine here but some iffy college physics.

Winter in July Ch. 5

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Out of the deeply humid night, six cars of various no-nonsense makes pulled into the front lot of GenoWave in close succession, making a staggered cordon around the narrow, glass-walled front atrium. The neatly landscaped entrance was dark except for two tall overhead street lights, dimly illuminating a bland, 2-story industrial park façade. The name of the company was hardly even in evidence except for a tasteful etched logo in the glass front door.

Like some avant garde clown circus, the cars disgorged over a dozen people, most in FBI flak jackets and all heavily armed. Olivia strode to the front of the group, also dressed in a tight black protective vest over her white blouse. Similarly geared, Charlie met her at the front door, and nodded in greeting.

"I like your way of 'asking nicely'," he opened, "but remind me to never make you have to ask for something twice." He smirked warmly, while efficiently checking his weapon for a full clip.

Olivia arched her eyebrows and grimaced. "I'm picking up bad habits, aren't I? Company I'm keeping lately?"

Behind them, Walter Bishop approached gingerly, eyes wide, escorted by a business-like Astrid.

Olivia turned and spoke to them.

"Walter, you need to stay here with Astrid, and wait for us to make sure things are clear."

Charlie cocked his head slightly. Craning to look past the duo, he asked, "Where's the other Bishop?"

Olivia hesitated, looked around, then took Charlie lightly by the crook of his elbow and guided him a few feet from the milling crowd of operatives doing their pre-mission checks.

"Charlie – I didn't want to get into it earlier, but Peter's involved in this."

Charlie frowned and started to protest, but Olivia interrupted him.

"No, not like that. He's involved because his father was involved, years ago. Charlie – his father used him in experiments similar to what happened to the victims, but when Peter was a child."

Speechless, Charlie involuntarily stole a look at Walter Bishop, who was gazing up at the multitude of flashlight beams reflected in the surrounding trees with vacuous pleasure.

"Yeah, I know. Apparently, once you've been exposed to whatever they're doing, it makes you especially susceptible, or I guess, pliable toward it. So that's how I got that guy Mitchell, the one with the GenoWave passkey." She held up a translucent card.

"He and some other men were seemingly trying to abduct Peter from his hotel, but I got there just in time, mostly anyway. The other two got away, before I got a lucky shot at Mitchell. Unfortunately not lucky enough to keep him alive for questioning."

"But at least the passcard was proof enough for the warrant." Charlie finished for her.

With a rueful smile, Olivia tucked the card back in her vest pocket, and checked her own weapon.

"I'm trying not to pick up too many bad habits."

Business-like again, Olivia moved toward the front door, Charlie following in her wake.

"So anyway," she continued, "Peter Bishop is sleeping off what looks like a relatively harmless sedative cocktail back in the lab. Hopefully Astrid can play replacement Svengali well enough that Walter is able to help us with whatever we find in there."

"Shall we, then?" Charlie asked. "There's only so much you can ask of Astrid."

Olivia rapped out orders to the team, sending half around the back of the building with Charlie, and keeping half with her. With the butt of her firearm, she knocked out a large ragged hole in the glass where the GenoWave logo had been. Reaching her arm through the opening, she loosed the lock and subsequently loosed the assembled agents through the glass door like a human wave.

Teams of two or three persons took down each of two very white main corridors spanning off the vacant central receptionist's desk. Pelting down the hallways, flashlights at all angles, and stopping momentarily to sweep open doorways, the teams found nothing but empty cubicles and a few well-appointed conference rooms, no doubt for investors.

Frustrated, Olivia radio'd Charlie. "Anything on your end?"

The radio crackled back. "No. Looks like a total Potemkin village. I don't think anyone really works here."

"This passcard goes somewhere. Send some of your guys upstairs, tell them to look for any lock that looks like it takes a card key." Olivia pulled the passcard out again and re-examined it under her flashlight.

There was a background murmur over the radio, and Charlie broke in again. "Olivia! We found what looks like a service elevator."

"With a cardkey lock."

Triumphantly, Olivia started out at a dead run. "I'm on my way."

Turning a corner, she found Charlie and two agents examining the controls beside a pair of steel doors. Pushing past them, she inserted the card, to have the doors part and indeed, reveal an elevator. Guns drawn, the four entered the elevator.

"Only goes down, ma'am," said one of the junior agents.

"Well, that's where we're going," Olivia answered, cocking back the slide on her 9mm.

*

* * *

*

Restlessly, Walter was drawn to the front entrance of the building, only to have Astrid holding him back.

"Professor, we have to wait. We don't know if it is safe yet."

The older Bishop irritably shrugged off her hand on his sleeve.

"Oh, of course it is safe. As I told Agent Dunham earlier, they won't find anything."

Astrid frowned. "What do you mean? The evidence points to GenoWave being the ones experimenting with ice borers, or at least, connected with the men who were killed."

Walter primly pursed his lips and lifted his chin.

"Of course they are connected," he said in staccato fashion. "What I SAID was that there will be nothing here, in this building."

As often happened, Astrid felt herself falling, Alice-like, into a rabbit hole, far from the reality she thought she understood.

"Umm," she stalled, "So, how do you know that?"

Walter paused, favoring her with a dim-graduate-assistant gaze.

"As I've told everyone from the start, the technology is immature, and requires a place with naturally strong magnetic fields. This place," he gestured vaguely around, "this is just a rest stop off the highway with less than the usual contingent of gas stations and low cuisine outlets."

"No," he said firmly, "if we are to find the culprits in this heinous business, we must beat them at their own game. There is nothing here."

Just at that moment, Charlie's head poked out of the shattered front door.

"Hey, Astrid! Dr Bishop! Come here - we found something!"

Walter looked taken aback, and Astrid bit back a rejoinder as she took his arm and hurried him toward the entrance.

Down in the basement, Olivia and one of the two junior agents were in a large, featureless room, completely white on all surfaces, and with better than average cooling – the temperature was easily just above freezing, if not colder. In the center of the room, and the only object visible, was a raised, shallow tank of some translucent plastic material. The overall appearance of it was of a coffin and funeral bier from the 24th century, and Olivia shivered momentarily - from the cold, no doubt.

Walter and Astrid burst in the room breathlessly, and the older man stopped short in front of the coffin-like table with his fingers steepled underneath his chin.

"Ingenious," he breathed, fog drifting out of his lips.

Charlie made to say something but Olivia soundlessly hushed him.

"What is it, Walter?" she asked softly.

Without answering, he pulled out a set of car keys, at which Astrid started guiltily – not having realized he had them.

Walking toward the table, he tossed the keys – only to have them freeze in midair, suspended over the device.

He slowly turned to his gaping audience, and smiled humbly.

"I was wrong. They have advanced over our primitive old techniques."

He walked over to the table and gently patted the keys above it, making them bob in the air in an arc but not fall.

"This," he said portentiously, "this is a terminal. In the base are strong electromagnets – see, how they suspend the steel of the key ring?"

Circling the table, he spoke with increasing energy.

"Yes, yes. They are using the artificial magnetic field here to couple into the earth's magnetic field – basically like adding an on or off ramp to a big highway."

"How delightfully apropos this location is, then." Highly pleased with himself, he chuckled broadly.

Olivia looked at Charlie, and the almost comical expression of stupefaction on his face reminded her to close her own dropped jaw.

She found her voice with difficulty. "But Walter, where is everyone, then?"

Walter came back to reality with annoyance. "It is as I told you, they are not here. They must be where the highway – where the magnetic fields – are strong enough for cross traffic, as it were. This is only a one-way ticket."

Olivia clenched her teeth in frustration.

"So how do we find them?", she grit out.

Surprisingly, Walter's face lost all trace of irritation, and his gaze fell to the floor with infinite sadness.

Without looking up at her, he said, "I know a way, but it won't be easy. I can't guarantee it will work, or even if it is safe."

Charlie and Astrid looked bemused, but Olivia stepped toward Walter and almost eagerly took his sleeve.

"What? What do we need to do?"

Walter looked at her sympathetically and patted her hand. "Not us, I'm sorry to say." he answered regretfully.

"It has to be Peter."

* * *

*

short chapter, but probably y'all can see where this is going...

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	6. Chapter 6

Come hell or high water, I'm going to get this done before the new episodes start again. This was supposed to be the end, but will have one more chapter, ai!

Thanks as always for all the great words of encouragement, especially neoxer with her great insights. To all who wrote in saying so, yes! I love Charlie too - I could easily never get this done for all the various interactions I'd love to explore.

Chapter 6

* * *

The world was a bad watercolor painting. A bad watercolor painting with a marching band soundtrack. And a really musty, dead uncle's basement smell. And, a cow. And, a huge plastic dolphin tank.

With one arm dragging on the floor, Peter threw his other arm over his eyes to block out the horrible reality and the swirling ceiling tiles. He felt lumpy cushions under his back, and a hard pillow under his head. He felt the warmth of a sliver of daylight on his cheek, though the rest of him was cool. After an indefinite period of time, the marching band subsided a bit, and he took a chance to peer tentatively out from under his sleeve through squinted eyes.

It was his father's lab – lord help him – again. The lights in the basement room were out, but dawn was coming through the dusty windows. He recognized the feel of the ragged old couch beneath him – again, as many times in as many days – and groaned. He rolled to face toward the back of the couch and rubbed his scalp in futile denial.

"Peter?" said a soft voice, sleepily.

Puzzled, he turned his head toward the voice to find himself inches from Olivia's face, her having appeared from below the edge of the sofa like an apparition. Frozen, he stared stupidly at her parted lips for a long minute, before raising his gaze to her eyes.

To find her making the same adjustment.

"Um…" he said, trailing off helplessly.

Much of the sleep abruptly disappeared from Olivia's face as she pulled herself away into a sitting position against the couch. Peter couldn't help but notice guiltily that she'd been laying on a rough assortment of shipping blankets on the floor, not two feet away from him, with her raincoat as a coverlet.

She pulled her hair back from her face into a loose ponytail and yawned exaggeratedly.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

In the tangle of his slow, misfiring neurons, Peter assessed his possible responses.

"You know, if you wanted to sleep with me…" Olivia favored him with a hard look. "I'd just like to be awake for it, for once, is all," he finished, lamely.

Olivia gave him a mock frown, but couldn't hold it. She reached over to gently rub her thumb along a heroic bruise rising from his right temple. He held his breath.

"You'll just have to work on that, then, hmm, Mr. Bishop?" She held her hand against his hair for slightly longer than strictly medically necessary, and then pushed herself off the floor to a standing position.

Just then, the manic face of Walter Bishop appeared over her shoulder. Peter groaned again, only partially theatrically, and put his forearm back over his eyes, turning away from the crowd.

"Son!" Walter exclaimed. "It is so good to have you with us again. I must tell you about our exciting night out!"

Walter had also had sleep-mussed hair, and oh god – was that hay caught up in it? Peter shuddered to think where his father'd spent the night.

"Don't tell me," he said, without removing his arm, "it has to do with the giant dolphin tank."

Walter and Olivia both looked around, confused, until Walter's transparent face lit up with understanding.

"Ah, yes! The terminal. We had it transported here last night. I studied it for hours. Quite simple actually. Ingenious, but simple. Probably quite safe, even." He looked over at the GenoWave tank admiringly.

Peter pushed himself reluctantly to a slouched sitting position, and glanced up at his two companions. Walter appeared excited, while Olivia had taken on a strangely unsettled look.

"The terminal. Right."

He combed his hair with his fingers.

"I'm no former top secret government Fantastic Four supervillan evil genius research scientist, but even I," he drew out for effect, "suspect that this is going to be something I only want to hear about after a shower and some black coffee."

"And probably not even then."

He stood up and pushed past them toward the doorway, heading toward the student locker rooms down the hall where he presciently had taken to leaving a gym bag with a spare set of clothes.

Olivia called from behind him, "Peter! The security detail outside needs to stay with you!" He grimaced but kept going.

"Please?" said her voice.

He waved his assent and disappeared through the door.

Walter turned to Olivia. "Perhaps you should make the coffee, dear." He picked a test tube off the bench and gestured for effect.

"De-caf, you know. Otherwise he gets irritable."

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* * *

A few hours or so later, Peter and his father were both kneeling on the floor, investigating into an access panel they'd loosened in the terminal pedestal. Peter, fresh-scrubbed in a grey t-shirt and jeans, was debating the mathematics of magnetic field coupling and waving a wrench in illustration. The elder Bishop, still in the shapeless flannel trousers and sweater from days ago, nodded in time and periodically scratched and scratched out equations, depending on the wrench's approval, on the side of the plastic panel with crayon.

Olivia and Astrid sat on the couch together, sipping tepid coffee, bemusedly watching the scene.

"How long have they been at it? Do we have a plan?" asked Astrid, finally. She'd arrived about half an hour ago, and had missed most of the discussions. She found herself quickly relegated to the peanut gallery with Olivia.

"Hours, I think," Olivia answered. Her face was grave. "Apparently this is a one-way device; they're trying to figure out how to re-polarize it, or something, so it can also retrieve." She took another draw off the coffee without tasting it.

Without turning his head, Walter corrected, "Re-align the loopback!" and continued his stream of directions at Peter, who was now head-first in the depths of the terminal pedestal base with only his jeans and bare feet showing out.

Astrid sat in silence for a moment again, and then ventured, "So when does Peter go, then?"

There was a muffled bang from inside the terminal. Olivia looked ashen, and Walter hung his head guiltily.

Peter awkwardly wriggled backwards out of the plastic base, wrestling with the tail of his t-shirt which had hung up on something inside and was attempting to choke him as he pulled out. Now, sitting cross-legged on the floor, he smoothed his shirt back down over his belly and then looked at his hands. He tilted his head up at angle and gazed at his father.

Walter was prepared for a lecture, but not the wounded, tired expression on his son's face.

"Son…" he started.

"'Peter'," the younger Bishop corrected, flatly.

Walter bit his lip, and in discomfort raised himself to his feet and put distance between them, wringing his hands.

"Peter," he said firmly, with a weak smile. "Olivia, Asss…my colleagues." He gazed out the window rather than make eye contact with anyone in the room.

"So…. so as you know, I believe that this terminal was used to attempt to send both Mr Baker and Mr McMannis through space to wherever it is that the main station is located. Hub and spoke, you know, just like the airlines."

Astrid took her responsibilities as a straight man very seriously.

"But it didn't work?" She offered, quizzically.

Walter smiled paternally, and shook his head. He hesitated for a moment, half thinking that Peter would have had something witty to say, but there was nothing from the man on the floor, he didn't even move.

"No. Suffice to say, it didn't work, and may the universe have mercy on their two poor souls, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Olivia interjected, "So, you think GenoWave used them as convenient test subjects, because they happened to be in the building?"

She answered her own question. "How perfect – and how callous. They were doing just the type of jobs that would be done after hours, when no one would be around to notice if they disappeared. And then turned up dead elsewhere."

Walter shook his head sadly, still watching his son out of the corner of his eye. "Yes, how… cruel. To use someone for experiments, without their consent. Clearly, there is nothing moral stopping them from continuing their work."

In response, Peter stood up and squared his shoulders, looking at his father ironically.

"So. Walter. We have to stop them, I get it. But what makes you think you know better how to make this work then they did?"

"Or are you as detached from your test subjects as they are?"

Walter looked horrified for a moment, and then rushed to Peter's side, stalling out a few feet away as his son drew back and raised a hand and a palpable shield between them.

"Just… don't, Walter."

Peter sighed again and then spoke with exaggerated conviction. Olivia still hadn't met his eyes, but had reached up from behind him and lightly taken hold of the fingers on his right hand. "Ok, then. So why can't we just send a GPS device, like I – and apparently only I - thought we were? At risk of sounding insufficiently gung ho for this little joy ride, why do you need me?"

Walter composed his face overtly and then spoke slowly. "The uh, the worms, only work with organic material. We can send a GPS device to locate the main station, but it has to be attached to a live, organic form. Uh, a body."

Peter bit out the words. "Why. Me."

His father straightened assertively. "You have been sensitized to the worms' field manipulations. We've seen that. The molecules in your body can respond more rapidly and evenly when exposed to the fields, much like having an MRI done. GenoWave didn't do this preparation with their subjects, so setting up the fields created localized hot spots of energy within the bodies. And another mistake that GenoWave made - not normalizing the body temperature of the test subjects. All told, there was too much energy gradient through the body, put too much stress on the subjects."

"I can do this, Peter, I know what they did wrong and can avoid it. But I won't pretend it is without risk."

Olivia and Astrid sat wordlessly. Olivia reminded herself to breathe.

Peter huffed indignantly, breaking the silence. "Well, let's just get it over with, then, huh?" He shook off Olivia's grasp. "I'll finish the terminal adjustments for the retrieval, and you," he directed this at the cosmos in general, "you just figure out how I'm supposed to lay my neck out for the guillotine."

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Another hour later, and Peter, stripped to boxers but still too angry to be self conscious, was stoically accepting placement of sensor pads on his chest and back by Olivia. Walter and Astrid were busy loading bags of ice into the top part of the terminal. It looked more and more like a coffin, and Olivia shuddered.

"You don't have to do this," she said, unnecessarily.

Peter pursed his lips. "Don't I? Isn't this where I redeem my worthless life in one bright, altruistic flare out before I die?" He spoke without rancor, though.

"We can find another way." She dropped her hands and backed up a foot.

"We'll find another way." Jaw set, eyes suspiciously liquid, she forcefully began to repack the sets of sensor wires.

"Olivia…" Peter stepped up to her and took her hands, guiding them off the box of wires and holding them up to his chin, forcing her to look at him.

"I don't want to do this. I'm not stupid, and I've never been mistaken for altruistic. But I realize what's at stake here. It's not great… but it's ok."

"Peter," she said, "I may have thought differently about you before, your record, and all. But I've seen what you do, what you say, what things make you feel. What - what you grew up with." She looked over at Walter, still engrossed in filling the tank.

"I know what it is like to have to find your own way, Peter. To have demons that chase you into adulthood. But - you don't have to die to prove that you deserve to live."

Peter pressed his lips together as if to start to say something, and then stopped. Instead, he dipped his head to look her directly in the eye. "Hey, Walter's right, occasionally, sometimes, you know. Maybe today's my lucky day."

Olivia was startled for a moment, and then tugged her hands free. "Peter Bishop. You better make it through this, because then I'm going to kill you."

Peter smiled warmly, creases coming to his green eyes. "Stand in line, Dunham. So, ok, boss, now finish wiring me up."

As Olivia turned to get more sensor pads from the laboratory bench, his father popped up in that annoying way of his, bearing a test tube of some amber liquid.

"Drink up, Peter." Peter's smile immediately vanished, replaced by a cold glare as he took the proffered item.

"What is it? Hemlock?" he asked dryly.

Walter looked puzzled for a moment, then laughed, lightly. "Oh, heavens no. Though not a bad idea. But it is cognac."

He produced similar test tube with a flourish, and held it up in a toast.

"To your health, my boy. Good luck and godspeed."

Surprised despite himself, Peter watched as his father downed the shot in one go, and shakily did the same himself.

Walter dropped his hand with the test tube and gazed long at his son. "Ready?"

His sense of irony failed him, so Peter said nothing. He allowed his father and Olivia to lead him over to the tank, now half full of icy water, probably two foot deep. He stood, swaying, and closed his eyes in resigned detachment as his father continued to instruct.

"First, we'll get Peter into the tank and get his body temperature fall below 60 deg Fahrenheit. This will slow his metabolism and provide an adequate medium to introduce the worms."

Peter flinched, involuntarily, and his father patted him on the shoulder awkwardly. "You probably won't feel it, since you'll technically be clinically dead."

"Of course." Peter responded.

"Then, once the worms have embedded themselves, we'll activate the terminal magnets, where the magnetic field loops will build in strength and finally couple into the planetary field. Peter will at that point be transported to wherever the main terminal is, and Astrid will monitor the GPS signal from the embedded transceiver to see where it appears."

Peter rubbed the newly raw spot on his forearm absent-mindedly, feeling the hard bump of the tiny transceiver.

"We'll only have a moment, Astrid," the elder Bishop continued, "so you must be vigilant."

Astrid looked up from her laptop, and nodded grimly. She faced the terminal from a table about four feet away, with several monitors and other piece of equipment lit up and intermittently beeping.

"Now, the key to this is the special boost generator we've added to the terminal. Approximately one minute after Peter is transported, the energy of our artificial field will abruptly snap and reverse itself – much like a slingshot effect. The result of this should be to momentarily transform this one-way box into a two-way box, allowing the traveler to be snapped back to our location."

Peter noticed idly at that moment that Olivia had a powerful grip on one of his biceps, her fingers practically digging into his flesh. Wincing, he pried them off, and Olivia grimaced apologetically and dropped her hand.

Walter noticed the motion and smiled sadly.

"Olivia, dear, why don't you help me get Peter situated?" He produced a syringe of something murky, and took Peter's elbow with his thumb locked over the vein. Peter stiffened automatically.

"For the pain, son." Walter spoke softly and waved the needle at the tank. "Even if not for the ice, the worms…"

Peter relaxed reluctantly, nodded, and felt rather than saw the pinprick.

"Quickly, now, Olivia, there you go." With Olivia and Walter each holding an arm, Peter stepped on a small wooden crate upended by the terminal and eased himself into the long, narrow tank of icy water.

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Last chapter soon, promise!


	7. Chapter 7

Story complete! Thanks to everyone who stuck it out with me, I'm happy to have finished this just before the new eps start up again. To those who were such faithful reviewers, SPECIAL thanks, and hope this ending is satisfying. Looking forward to everyone's else's take on the eternal questions - what happened to peter as a child, will charlie ever admit his undying love for olivia, will olivia and peter... anything?

All characters courtesy of fringe, not mine.

Chapter 7

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Laying on a table in a white white space, unable to move. Blue-white light with indistinct shapes in the periphery of his vision. And still the cold. Brittle, numb, implacable, eternal, hopeless cold. Cold that ever so gradually seized up through his limbs, body, stole over his heart, and then seeped into brain where he knew, just knew, if it ever completely swallowed his mind that he would never wake up.

The all-pervasive ice bath was truly excruciating. Where was Walter with his ubiquitous homemade pharmacologia when one needed him? He found himself drifting, from the drugs or the ice he didn't know. He vaguely heard a voice, soft, female, reciting numbers. 90.2 88.3 84.6… It was almost funny, didn't they know, people just die when they get that cold? Hell, he almost died as a kid, trapped in the icy lake in the overturned car. 81.7 78.4 It occurred to him that he couldn't bear the cold one second longer, but then, he'd long since lost the ability to move his limbs, it seemed, and so it really wasn't up to him.

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Astrid mechanically read off Peter's temperature from the lurid red LED display, even though both Olivia and Walter could easily see the display themselves. She felt she owed it to the man in the tank, somehow, like by reading them aloud, she was reminding everyone that there was a real person in the ice.

"70 degrees," she announced to no one. Walter had brought over a canister containing, presumably, the ice worms, and was sitting next to her, face blank, watching the readings. Different screens showed brain activity, heart rate, blood oxygen. And temperature, which inexorably dropped, minute by minute.

"64.9" The blonde agent hovered indecisively between the row of monitors and the GenoWave tank. She searched Walter's face, looking for confidence, or confusion, but found neither.

"Sixty degrees." Astrid turned anxiously to Walter Bishop. "Sixty degrees, Professor."

Walter shook himself as if from a trance. Opening the canister on his lap, he stared down into the jumble of dry ice and blue worms.

In front of them, the consoles sprung to barking, warning life.

"Dr Bishop!" Astrid called. "EEG, heart rate, everything is changing."

The older man focused on the monitors sharply, and then relaxed.

"Reasonable deviations from normal. He's obviously reacting to the borer's magnetic field presence but not at a dangerous level. The ice bath is helping."

Olivia was hunched over the side of the tank, both hands gripping the edge, monitoring the icy form below for any movement. Her hair fell in her face.

She growled, "The ice bath is also killing him, Walter. Let's get this over with."

Walter collected his worms and his dignity and moved hesitantly to the side of the tank. Within, his son was now inhumanly pale, with purple fingertips and lips. Light frost dusted his eyelashes, though the pillow of ice beneath where his head lay meant his face was just clear of the icy water. It was the face of a corpse. Perfect, unchanging, and very, very dead.

With a shaky hand, Walter extracted several worms from the canister, and dropped them in the water.

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The gauzy crystal wall that had encapsulated Peter's brain in chilled silence splintered along one ragged line, roughly, like a fine flaw erupting in a sheet of glass. Disoriented, Peter felt the seductively numbness of hypothermia crack open, allowing sensation in again, in this case, an echo of the horrible keening pressure in his head that had been the hallmark of the ice worm's presence. He felt panic well up in his throat but couldn't make a sound. His mistake, he berated himself internally, was in not having some way to signal them, that this was a bad idea. Why would his father think this was ok? No, stupid question, but why would Olivia? All of a sudden, he thought of fifty objections to his father's plan, from sending a transceiver alone to sending, for god's sake, a hamster, and why would Walter not have thought this through or maybe he DID and..

The gauzy crystal wall abruptly shattered completely, a myriad fine cracks exploding at once in all directions. Simultaneously, he felt a stabbing, wrenching pain – where? In his chest, below a rib, atop a collarbone. Where there had once been cold, all he could feel now was the blaze of his flesh being torn and the molten heat from the wounds pouring through his veins, into his skull, where all thought but for the awful void of eternity was lost.

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Olivia drew back in horror as the ice borers quickly and eagerly sought out the living body within the miniature glacial bay and bloodlessly dove in. Peter's body convulsed as the blue worms attached to him, one at his throat, another in his chest, and the last one in his side. She reflexively thrust a hand into the ice to steady him, pressing her palm onto his sternum. At that moment, his eyes flickered to her, sightlessly. Glacial blue. She choked back a sob and held her hand tightly against him, despite the bone-chilling ache of the water.

Behind her, Astrid was frantic. "Dr. Bishop! The readings are all over the place! I don't know how to interpret any of this!"

Walter spoke quickly, "Astrid! Engage the magnetic drive." At the same time, he moved to Olivia and grasped her firmly by both shoulders, forcing her away from the tank and toward the monitoring station.

"My dear, we must get back, it is not safe here."

Olivia looked at him wildly, wanting to rail against the incongruity of that statement, but at that moment, a high-pitched whine initiated from the terminal, growing rapidly in frequency and volume.

"We're in transport mode," Walter said with preternatural calmness. "T minus 60 seconds for retrieval mode."

Both women strained to see what was happening in the tank, but the entire center of the room was engulfed in what looked like a tiny, intense aurora borealis, completely obscuring the equipment.

The scales on all the life signals monitors abruptly went to zero readings.

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Peter opened his eyes, to find himself standing in a pleasantly lit circular waiting area. There were low couches and tables along the walls, tasteful, anonymous art, and a few doors. He started to take a step, and then stopped suddenly, wrapping his arms around himself and looking down in disbelief. Rather than being laid out a frozen, dripping, nearly naked cadaver, he was dry, even comfortably warm. He patted the familiar grey t-shirt and jeans from earlier in the day – they felt solid and substantial. In fact, he felt great – he lifted his shirt experimentally to check on the nasty little gash he'd gotten on his belly when he'd struggled to get himself out of the terminal pedestal – but the skin was clear. He raised his hand to his forehead, but felt none of the bruises and cuts from the previous night's encounters. No headache, no tiredness…

Or else he was dead.

He impulsively checked his arm for the implanted transceiver – the insertion wound was gone, but he felt the comforting little bump of the device still under the skin. Surely, if he were in heaven, he wouldn't have bits of metal still stuck in him.

Peter Bishop, he thought wryly, what makes you think it would be heaven for you?

He had no watch, but figured it had been at least sixty seconds. So, if Walter was right, and that was a big if, he should be back to harsh Boston reality any second. But as long as he was here, no sense staying out in the open where someone could walk in on him – could you get shot in heaven?

He padded across the deep pile carpet to one of the side doors. Looking down bemusedly, he saw he was in bare feet, just as he had been that afternoon. He felt the reassuringly heavy t-shirt material between two fingers a second time. Somehow, what you got transported as was some sort of best-case projection of yourself, or, last vision of yourself – not the sodden reality. He wished idly that he'd projected the idea of "shoes" before transporting, and rubbed unthinkingly at the ice borer wound in his side that wasn't there as he ducked into the corridor beyond.

The hallway presented various large windows into what looked like laboratory bays. Within some of them, he saw people clustered around benches or gathered in animated conversation, but no one paid him any particular attention. He once heard voices in the hall, and dodged into utility closet to avoid them – it was one thing to have the employees notice an anonymous figure go past a side window, quite another to encounter a group of people head on. Wearing no shoes, he was probably suspicious looking.

At the far end of the hallway, he turned and surveyed irritably for a clock of some sort. Easily, more than several minutes now. Could he really freeze to death in Boston during this time if he were really here – in Canada? Somewhere? Taking a factory tour of Non-Descript Manufacturing, Inc.?

He heard voices again behind him, close, and whirled quickly to find a convenient place to hide. A lux looking glass corridor to one side led to a polished wooden door. If anywhere he might find answers, it would be in the boss' office, no doubt.

He sprinted through the glass ante-door and then holding his ear to the wooden inner door, and hearing no sounds, he quickly let himself in. With his back against the door, holding the knob, he scanned the room. A floor to ceiling window looked out on a semi-urban cityscape he didn't recognize. The office was dominated by a sleek but imposing mahogany desk. The chair swiveled to face him.

He breathed out.

"Nina Sharp. You bitch."

The red-haired woman smiled.

"Good to see you too, Peter."

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"25 seconds!" Astrid's voice had moved beyond panic to almost hysteria. The wail of the terminal in the center of the room and bright intensity of the aurora around it made conversing and even thinking difficult.

"Professor! I don't think the magnetic booster thing is reversing. Look at these readings – shouldn't they be slowing and then reversing? It looks like the readings are still accelerating!"

Walter Bishop was a study in calculation. He scribbled madly at a pad of paper in front of him while gazing intently from monitor to monitor. "Still another 10 seconds before field reversal," he said.

Olivia stared fixedly at the life signs monitors, as staring into the aurora was not possible. All monitors still showed zero readings, and the temperature probes now showed 32 Fahrenheit – the temperature of the ice, not a human being.

She wrestled with throwing herself into the aurora to drag Peter Bishop out and throwing herself at Walter Bishop to have him make it all stop. Neither option seemed viable but doing nothing was imminently going to be unthinkable.

"35 seconds," Astrid called out again. "Readings still accelerating!"

Olivia was terrified to see a heavy trail of perspiration starting down the elder Bishop's temple, as he tried to make sense of the readings.

"Walter!" she cried, "What's happening to Peter?"

He looked up at her unseeingly, still plotting angles in his head. "I think," he said, "I think we must add more power to the circuit, force the field to destabilize and collapse."

"50 seconds! No loopback!"

Walter pushed past Astrid and started to frantically throw heavy knife-switches that were connected to thick cables leading into the aurora-shrouded terminal. The whine of the machine grew so insistent that Olivia covered her ears with her hands, and somewhere, there was the attenuated sound of a window breaking.

"Dr Bishop – we're overloading the circuits!"

Olivia and Astrid looked at him mutely.

He stared deep into the heart of the miniature sun. "Peter," he whispered.

* * *

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"Come in, my dear boy." Nina Sharp favored him with an oily, predatory look.

Peter involuntarily clenched the door handle, as if to bolt, but realized it would be futile. He drew himself up, set his jaw, and managed a credible saunter across the carpet toward the desk.

"And, aren't you just adorable, standing there in bare feet like a schoolboy." She oozed to the side of the desk and hitched one hip on top, resting her hands in her lap. "Come here, darling, and sit down."

Sixty seconds. For the love of God, could this just have been the day his father'd been right. At this rate, he'd pray that the chip was actually working and that at least the Mounties or whomever would be there soon.

Peter casually propped himself on the edge of a chair, out of reach of the desk and its owner.

"So, you're not surprised?" he opened.

She smiled. "Surprised? Well, if anyone was going to turn up unexpected, it would have to be you or your father. Or your delightful little friend Agent Dunham."

Peter tensed at that, and Nina noticed.

"Anyone else and I'd have to have them removed. Permanently. You're lucky I like you. Don't tell me you're developing a soft spot for people, after all this time."

Cat and mouse was a game Peter wasn't unfamiliar with, as was poker, and in this game, he did have an ace.

"Cut the Elvira-Mistress-of-the-Dark-Corporation act. You know why I'm here, you know I'll be tracked."

The woman pursed her lips and drew back. "Of course. And you don't seem too surprised, either, to find me here, by the way."

She rose regally and began to slide some papers into an expensive satchel.

"Sorry, Nina. Massive Dynamic's fingers were all over this one. You're going to have to pay more money to your shell-company lawyers, so they make it a challenge, at least."

"Don't flatter yourself, Peter," she said, coldly. "GenoWave was a mistake – sloppy. Methods, personnel, everything. We're in the process of cleaning that up. Your showing up here only accelerates things."

She laid the briefcase flat on the desk and regarded him dispassionately, speaking with calculated sincerity. "We're a huge conglomerate, with corresponding responsibility to the public. We have high standards for ourselves, and when lapses occur, we move quickly to correct the situation."

Peter smiled sardonically. "So you, mean, the police won't find anything linking you, by the time they get here."

The woman frowned, momentarily irritated, and then leaned in almost suggestively.

"If I were a true bad guy, it would stand to reason that you, my dear child, were the only loose end in this matter."

The resemblance to a lioness was almost too overwhelming to ignore, and Peter fought the urge to fling himself out of the chair toward the door.

Instead, he stood up leisurely. "But I'm lucky, since you like me."

After a tense moment, Nina sat back and laughed lightly. "So I do."

She picked up her satchel and started toward a back door of the office. "Everyone else will be gone soon, I suggest you take your leave as well."

"You can take that same glass hallway back the other way, and reach the transit lounge again more quickly."

As she opened the door, through which a helicopter deck could be seen, she turned and looked back at Peter, consideringly.

"Best of luck. Hypothermia is a nasty thing."

The door closed behind her.

A bolt of lightning cracked through Peter's skull, and he fell to his knees, gasping, and grasping his head in both hands. The room all of a sudden seemed tens of degrees colder, and a hideous ache raced through his bones. Putting his hand to his chest, he felt it come away sticky with blood. Breathing became impossible, and his heart was either racing or stopped, he couldn't tell. He put one hand to the floor to help himself stagger to his feet. Squinting painfully, he stumbled to the door and out into the glass hallway.

Another few minutes, and he flung open the door to what Nina had called the transit lounge. It appeared the same as before. Panting, he crumpled onto one of the lounges, noticing without emotion that new blood had welled up from a rib and his collarbone, and the tips of his fingers had turned purplish-blue. Shivering uncontrollably, now, he prayed again that his father would be right. Today.

Sixty seconds.

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With a horrible metallic screech, the giant electromagnets in the terminal failed, collapsing pole onto pole. The silence was almost as deafening as the previous howling protest of the machine, and for a moment, Olivia thought she might BE deaf. Smoke filled the room where the aurora had been. The timer froze in place at the time the machine had stopped: 68.3 seconds.

Astrid and Walter Bishop sat, stunned. No one moved.

And then the red LED blinked. 55 degrees. The heart rate monitor still showed zero.

"Peter!" yelled Olivia. Without thinking, she plunged into the smoke and ankle-deep icy water, feeling blindly for the holding tank.

Walter barked, "Astrid! Get the heating blankets! We have to warm his tissues to something sustainable, so I can restart his heart!"

Astrid pushed her way through the smoke, waving one of the blankets to disperse the cloud more quickly. Walter approached from the other side, with what looked like a defibrillator. In the middle of the carnage, Olivia had dropped the walls of the tank to produce a flat platform, and was holding an icy white Peter Bishop to her chest like a child, rocking him gently. He didn't move.

Walter softly tugged at her arms and guided the body of his son back down, while Astrid quickly began to wrap him mummy-like in the electric blankets.

"Clear his chest please," Walter said, lifting the two paddles high. Astrid pulled back the blankets and watched as the elder Bishop applied the charge. Peter's body convulsed, but the heart rate monitor was still flatlined.

"Turn up the heat, but slowly, slowly. The preservatives we put in the water should have prevented frostbite for the short time he was in the water, but we don't want to burn him, either."

Olivia had moved to hold Peter's head against her body, willing the warmth in her arms and chest to penetrate through his frozen scalp. His wet hair slowly soaked through the cotton of her blouse.

Walter watched the temperature monitor keenly.

"85 degrees. Step away, please, dear, and clear for another charge."

Peter's body convulsed again as the paddles were applied, and for a long moment, there was no sound in the room but the dripping water from the sides of the terminal. Then the heart rate monitor sprang to life, purring solidly.

Olivia already had Peter's head back cradled in her arms, and she stroked the sides of his face and whispered soothing, meaningless sounds. Walter lifted a syringe to the light, expelling air bubbles, then reached over to inject whatever it was into Peter's vein. Peter abruptly took a deep, rasping breath, but otherwise was still.

In the background, Astrid was off the phone. She held her palm to the receiver and called, tentatively, "Um, Agent Dunham?"

Olivia met her eyes, but didn't change position. Astrid took this as attention. "They found the place, ma'am. Outside Calgary, up in Alberta. They're rounding up Richard Maven as we speak."

"Peter did it, Olivia," Astrid said, comfortingly.

Olivia's smile didn't reach her eyes, but she nodded. The LED temperature monitor read 94 degrees.

"Olivia, help me get him somewhere more comfortable, shall we? Better he doesn't stay in this damp." Walter touched the side of her wrist.

Nodding again, she wrapped her arms tightly around Peter's blanketed arms, while Walter awkwardly took his legs. Together, they maneuvered him away from the wreckage of the lab area and over to the familiar, ratty couch.

Olivia laid back against the cushions of the couch, and reaching out her arms, took Peter down to rest against her. His head lay in the crook of her shoulder. Walter sat timidly on the far edge of the couch.

"The stimulant will help his system get back in order, and later we can clean out the worm remains, you know, and…."

Olivia rested her chin on the top of Peter's damp head, and did not respond.

"Well, body warmth is best, in any case," the elder man said, with a wan smile. "You just take care of him."

He stood up, surveying the room. "The custodians will be very cross."

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Sometime later, Olivia heard her name called in a dream. Embarrassed for having dropped off, she shook her head slightly and bumped into Peter's, his hair mussed but dry now, pressed against her cheek. She looked down into his face, and saw an ever so slight amount of green beneath the eyelashes. His cheeks were flushed with heat, and she immediately started to open the blankets around him, to give him some air.

"Mmm, no, don't," he murmured. He snuggled back into the blankets and her arms without opening his eyes.

She tipped her head against his forehead again and stroked his hair with one hand, staring off into the room. Absent-mindedly, she planted a small kiss on his temple.

There was a mumble from inside the blankets.

"You missed."

Helplessly, Olivia found herself smiling broadly. "I'm glad I didn't have to kill you, Peter," she whispered with mock strictness.

Peter lifted his face, eyes still drowsy, but fixed on her face, her smile, her lips.

"Yet."

He kissed her, full on the mouth. While her eyes widened and she lifted her hand to his jaw to join him in earnest, his head slipped backward to her shoulder. Green eyes closed, lips parted softly in sleep.

"Peter," she said sternly, to his now sleeping form, "we have to get you your own place."


End file.
